On the February 12 2004, after splitting from publishers Eidos it was announced that Sports Interactive, producers of the Championship Manager games, had acquired the brand and would henceforth release their games under the Football Manager name, whilst the Championship Manager series would go on, but no longer be related to Sports Interactive.

Football Manager 2005 was released in the UK on November 4, 2004 - closely followed by releases in many other countries around the world - and it became the 5th fastest selling PC game of all time (according to Eurogamer). The Macintosh version of the game comes on the same dual format disk as the PC version, so its sales are also included.